The End (novel) - Cultural References and Literary Allusions

Cultural References and Literary Allusions

• Lemony Snicket makes frequent references to Moby-Dick by Herman Melville. The character Ishmael is named after the narrator of Moby-Dick. Snicket's Ishmael constantly says "call me Ish," a reference to "call me Ishmael," the opening line of Moby-Dick.
• All of the people in the colony take their names from more or less famous castaways from literature or are connected to such castaways. Many castaways have names that originate from Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe such as Robinson and Friday. There are also the more obvious names from Shakespeare's The Tempest, including Mrs. Miranda Caliban, Alonso, Ferdinand, and Ariel. Calypso was an island goddess-nymph from Homer's Odyssey. Rabbi Bligh is named after William Bligh was involved in the famous mutiny on the Bounty
• The castaways, who dress in white and whose consumption of the coconut cordial keeps them docile, are an allusion to the Lotus Eaters encountered in the Odyssey. Also, Sunny calls the cordial "Lethe," a river whose waters cause forgetfulness in Greek mythology. The sheep strapped together are also a possible allusion to The Odyssey. Odysseus hides his men under sheep strapped together to escape the cyclops' cave.
• In the New Testament, Jesus often uses sheep as symbols to represent his followers. The sheep in The End do Ishmael's bidding and sleep in his tent, presumably indicating Ishmael's status as a false messiah to the castaways of the island.
• The cordial is described as "the opiate of the people". This is a reference to a passage written by Karl Marx:

• The poem Olaf recites at the end is the last stanza of This Be The Verse by Philip Larkin.
• When Sunny asks 'Why are you telling us about this ring?', the word she uses is 'Neiklot', or 'Tolkien' (who wrote The Lord of the Rings) backwards.
• At the beginning of Chapter Thirteen there is a mention of "...the heroine of a book much more suitable to read than this one spends an entire afternoon eating the first bite of a bushel of apples." This is a reference to the character Ramona Quimby in the book Beezus and Ramona by Beverly Cleary. The scene in question has Ramona taking one bite out of each apple before putting them back because to her the first bite tastes best. This is also significant because the character Beezus's real name is Beatrice.
• Multiple times throughout the book, the author mentions that "history is indeed little more than the register of crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind." This is taken from Edward Gibbon, who presumably took it from Voltaire.
• The sheep used as a mode of transportation, yoked together is likely referring to El Dorado as described in Candide, a short novel by Voltaire
• The tree that the islanders are forbidden to eat from is a reference to the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil in the biblical creation. Similarly, the Baudelaires were offered an apple by Ink, a reference to how Eve was tempted into eating a fruit from the Tree of Good and Evil by a serpent.
• When Sunny agrees that eating the apples will dilute the poison, she uses the word "Gentreefive," referring to Genesis 3:5 in the Bible, which says:

• Snicket makes some references from his previous books. An example is that just after he describes how confusing it is to skim through a book, he teases the reader by writing, "Three very short men were carrying a large, flat piece of wood, painted to look like a living room." which is a sentence from The Bad Beginning.
• In Chapter Six, when Sunny tries to say "What exactly are you accusing us of?", the word she uses is "Dreyfuss", referring to French Jewish army officer Alfred Dreyfus who was wrongly accused of treason in the late 19th century and who was also held on an island. Dreyfus' case caused a major schism in French society, similar to that of V.F.D. and the island's colonists.
• In Chapter Seven, when Sunny is trying to say "never again", the word she uses is "Yomhashoah", a reference to the Jewish holiday Yom HaShoah, the day set aside for remembering the six million Jews who died in the holocaust.
• Snicket also discusses the Cimmerians, and the phrase "In the dark".
• The poem Kit recites in Chapter 13 is The Night has a Thousand Eyes by Francis William Bourdillon.
• One of the islanders' name is Erewhon, which is an anagram for "nowhere." It could also refer to Erewhon the book by Samuel Butler, which features Erewhon, a fictional country that seems like a utopia, much like the island the orphans and Olaf land on. Erewhon is also the name of one of the biggest sheep stations in New Zealand and sheep feature in this book.